Well looked after: Former BBC1 controller Peter
Fincham, who was handed a £500,000 golden parachute when he quit the
BBC in disgrace in 2007

The BBC has been accused of acting like a ‘cosy cartel’ after revelations it handed a £500,000 payoff to an executive who quit in disgrace over doctored documentary footage of the Queen.

Peter Fincham, who ran BBC1 for two years, wrongly claimed a trailer showed the monarch storming out of a tetchy 2007 photo shoot with renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz.

In fact the footage was of Her Majesty arriving for the sitting. The ensuing row, dubbed Crowngate, saw accusations fly between Buckingham Palace and the BBC and claims that the monarch had been turned into a laughing stock.

He quit three months later after being criticised by a damning report into the affair. At the time the BBC refused to say whether he received a payoff.

According to The Times, Fincham – who is now ITV’s director of television - was handed ‘about half a million pounds’ in severance pay when he left.

Tory MP Stephen Barclay, who sits on the public accounts committee of MPs, criticised the payment yesterday.

He said: ‘It is remarkable that someone who failed to stop a falsely edited trailer which smeared Her Majesty the Queen and was criticised in a BBC internal review should be able to walk away with a public money pay off rather than face disciplinary action.

‘It illustrates a cosy cartel at the top of the BBC who are acting like an out of touch politburo rather than the guardians of public money.’

It emerged yesterday the BBC’s new director general Tony Hall – who recently admitted the corporation had ‘lost the plot’ over severance pay - has asked his staff to give him a ‘detailed briefing’ about the Fincham deal.

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The news came as the government spending watchdog revealed it has reopened an investigation into BBC severance deals.

Earlier
this month, the National Audit Office revealed the corporation handed
its staff £369million in golden goodbyes over eight years.

Its
initial report only investigated a sample of 60 recent cases out of a
total of 150. Nearly a quarter of those received more than they were
contractually entitled to.

But
following pressure from MPs, it has agreed to look into the files of 90
more senior managers given severance deals in the three years up to
December 2012. It will present its findings to the public accounts
committee before a second hearing into the debacle on September 9.

Misleading: Scenes from a trailer for A Year
With The Queen, which Mr Fincham claimed showed her storming out of a photo shoot with renowned U.S. photographer Annie Leibowitz. In fact the
footage showed her arriving

The BBC has so far resisted calls to identify the majority of cases identified by the NAO, citing data protection rules.

But the committee have threatened to use parliamentary powers to call director general Tony Hall before the Commons for an official ‘admonishment’ unless he complies with a parliamentary order to release the information.

The committee’s chair, Margaret Hodge MP, said she hopes to publish the names of all those who received more money than they were contractually entitled to.

In 2011, Fincham said his role at the BBC had been a ‘lovely job because ... you are given, bluntly, quite a lot of money to spend’. He was responsible for handing presenter Jonathan Ross his infamous £18million contract in 2006.

The BBC refused to discuss the details of the case yesterday, but said: ‘Whilst the BBC does not publicly discuss individual contracts, the BBC director general Tony Hall has asked for a detailed briefing about the facts of this reported case as soon as possible.’